A Progressive friend is relentlessly pushing “Trump is awful” stories on me. I, a conservative, invariably counter by pointing out that Hillary’s list of sins and failures is infinitely worse.

I realized yesterday that my arguments are irrelevant. My friend will never vote for someone who is not 100% pro-abortion, pro-socialized medicine, or pro-open borders. Given a choice between a rotting dead body that is pro-Abortion and a genuine angel from Heaven that is pro-Choice, he’d vote for the rotting body every time.

Even as we endlessly talk down the other side’s candidates (because few people are really comfortable talking their own candidate up in this bizarre election year), what really matters is the ideological divide underlying this election. The following list might help you decide on which side of that divide you live. Once you decide, do remember that you will never get people to accept your candidate, no matter how flawed their own candidate, until you get them to accept your ideology.

I like free speech. I like to use good ideas to challenge bad ideas. I think the whole point of political correctness is to erase our ability even to entertain thoughts about freedom, justice, and our inherent (not government-given, but inherent) rights as set forth in the Bill of Rights. I therefore have been untroubled by the Alt-Right movement, even though I know some nasty people have slipped in on the fringes.

I’m just grateful that, being a conservative, these racists and antisemites do live only on the fringes of a freedom-based political movement. If you’re on the Left, the racists and antisemites sit dead center.

From their perch at the top of the Democrat political heap, the Leftist racists demean blacks by saying that blacks are so stupid and helpless that they can function only with government support and guidance. From that same perch, they also offer unflinching support for genocidal Palestinians and for the BDS movement that aids the Palestinians in their genocidal goals. Indeed, this antisemitic rage has become a central pillar of the modern Democrat movement.

Meanwhile, even as Hillary was castigating a group that likes to tweak noses and yank chains, and most especially make a mockery of political correctness, she was receiving an endorsement from the Communist Party of the United States. A little historic reminder is useful here: The Communist Party of the United States actively seeks to bring about the same regimes that killed more than a 100 million people in the 20th century, and that are still going strong in various parts of the world.

Liberals are more compassionate if you believe (a) that the state is the source of all charity and succor; (b) that it’s perfectly okay to strip people of their hard-earned wealth to feed the endlessly hungry state; (c) that it doesn’t matter whether the state fails when it comes to using this strong-armed money to lift people from poverty because only intentions matter, not outcomes; and (d) compassion includes the afore-mentioned strong-arming, as well as routine excoriation of your political enemies, violent protests, and, if necessary deadly force.

Conservatives, however, are more compassionate if you believe in (a) working hard to create wealth and (b) believing that you have a moral obligation to give your excess time and wealth to worthy causes to uplift the poor and suffering and to help build your communities.

If you don’t believe me, watch this Prager U video and you might change your mind.

This is a good, long post. Mix a martini or make yourself some hot chocolate, find a quiet place, settle back, and read away!

Trump woos conservatives. The big news today is Donald Trump’s list of proposed Supreme Court nominees, all of whom of are, in John Yoo’s words “outstanding conservatives.” As regular readers know, this list means a lot to me. I have four hot-button issues which drive my candidate choices and Supreme Court nominees are my top concern.

Although I was a Ted Cruz gal, and truly believed I was a #NeverTrump voter, once Trump became the presumptive nominee, I rediscovered my motto that “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” That notion forced me to look at Hillary and conclude that, on the issues nearest to my heart, she will cause lasting, possibly irreparable damage.

These key issues are: (1) The Supreme Court, which Hillary will pack with Leftists; (2) our Second Amendment rights, which she has vowed to destroy (with the help of a Leftist Supreme Court); (3) Israel, which mirrors our own security situation and which Hillary will destroy; and (4) Islamic terrorism, something that Hillary will probably treat in the same way Obama does, given her history of making nice to people with terrorist connections (e.g., Huma, her Muslim Brotherhood gal pal; Yassir and Suha Arafat; and the Saudis).

On each of those issues, Trump promises the possibility of something better. And no, I’m not a fool. I know that Trump promises everything to everybody but, as I said, he still had the possibility of doing better than Hillary.

With today’s list of Supreme Court nominees, Trump assuaged my concerns on both Issue 1 (Supreme Court makeup) and Issue 2 (Second Amendment). I recognize that Trump can still do a bait-and-switch (something that the pundits to whom I’ve linked also fear), but he might not — unlike Hillary, who will definitely seek more Sotomayors, Ginsburgs, and Kagans.

Anyway, in addition to the Yoo reaction to Donald’s list, linked above, here are more reactions:

This post’s title, of course, is facetious. Dennis Prager is entirely unaware of my blog (and, no, I’m not complaining about that fact). I have noticed over the years, though, that Prager will often write a post that says what I had earlier blogged about, although he always says it better than I did (which is why he gets paid the biggish bucks). The latest example is Prager’s article stating that the scariest aspect of Donald Trump’s elevation in the Republican Party reflects the fact that Americans no longer understand either the nature of America or the nature of conservativism. They have hot-button issues, but no broad conservative principles.

Kudos to Nicholas Kristof for writing an opinion piece at the New York Times acknowledging what we all know to be true, which is that self-styled “liberals” are extremely intolerant, which means that they’re not actually liberal at all:

Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.

[snip]

I’ve been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.

“Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false,” said Carmi.

“The truth has a liberal slant,” wrote Michelle.

“Why stop there?” asked Steven. “How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?”

To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal arrogance — the implication that conservatives don’t have anything significant to add to the discussion. My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.

I can recommend the entire article. As I said, Kristof definitely deserves kind words and attention for daring to state such a thing in the New York Times’ pages. And I use the word “daring” deliberately because it implies courage, and it must have taken courage to set himself up to be on the receiving edge of the opprobrium heaped upon him. The more than 1300 comments posted to the article before commenting closed make it plain that he was casting pearls before aggressive, nasty, close-minded swine.

Thus, after Kristof carefully explained that liberals are denying their own principles when they refuse to allow conservatives access to free speech or the marketplace of ideas, he was savaged. The following are those comments that hundreds of New York Times readers rated as wonderful representations of pure and holy “liberal” thought. I would define them differently. To me, they’re representative of people who know deep down that their worldview cannot stand up to the rigors of that marketplace of ideas:

I found this poster on the Facebook page of a hardcore Progressive. The Leftists know what’s really at stake in this election. So should we:

While I don’t necessarily expect Trump to nominate conservative or even good judges, I know that Hillary or Bernie will pick hardcore Leftist judges who view the Constitution as an enemy that must be destroyed. My goal in November 2016 is to save as much as possible of the American fabric until a true constitutional conservative candidate – Ted Cruz! – comes along in 2020 or 2024 and begins the slow process of rebuilding a free America.

Having thought about it a lot, I’m about to commit what many will believe is heresy: I believe conservatives should suck it up and vote for Trump so as to avoid a hard Left presidency. Trying to save the Republican party at this juncture is an intellectual and practical dead-end, akin to doing CPR on a pulse-free heart attack victim even as the sarin gas is leaking under the door, through the keyhole, and over the transom.

As a predicate to my argument, let me say two things. First, the more I know of Trump as a person, the less I like him. He is rude, crude, coarse, mean, and vicious. I think that he speaks to everything that is low in the human condition. Second, I deeply respect those who are stating a principled opposition to a Trump presidency, men such as David French, George Will, and Ben Sasse.

Respecting them, though, doesn’t mean that I think these men, and other like-minded people, are making the right call. From where I sit, the mere fact that Donald Trump was nominated means that the Republican Party is already dead. We can drag it around for a bit, and dress it up nicely, but it’s still a rotting corpse and one that cannot be resuscitated.

Perhaps my different take comes about because, unlike French, Will, Sasse, or other prominent members of the #NeverTrump crowd, I am not a lifetime Republican. The party doesn’t hold any emotional resonance for me. I wasn’t there intellectually during the glory days of Eisenhower or Reagan. I came to conservativism at the beginning of the 21st century by dint of very hard intellectual work.

Reaching conservativism meant that, after a lifetime of unthinkingly checking the boxes next to every Democrat candidates’ name, I had finally figured out that no Democrat policies worked to achieve the promised goals — and, indeed, that all of these policies were counterproductive:

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the whole idea of Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican candidate for president in the 2016 election. In analyzing his (to me) unexpected victory, it’s easy enough to point fingers at the media, which gave him unlimited air time; at Fox, which turned into his personal campaign channel (and lost its rating status to CNN as a result); and at those cross-over Democrats in open primaries who, out of principled conviction or pure mischief, gave him the delegates he needed.

Nevertheless, Thomas Lifson, one of the smartest men I know, is on to something more profound when he says that Trump represents a sledgehammer that voters have taken to an irredeemably corrupt political system:

Let’s face it: America has been locked into a downward spiral under the permanent grip that a corrupt system has had on power. Politicians bent on reform, representing voters demanding it, arrive in Washington, DC only to discover the impossibility of breaking the hold on the levers of governance of lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians in their pockets. Washington, DC thrives, becoming the richest city in the country, as most of the rest of the nation stagnates and declines. Businesses discover that it is far more important to cultivate government support than to innovate. Rent seeking becomes the path to riches.

Ted Cruz, who deserves enormous credit for suspending his campaign last night, swallowing his anger over Trump’s escalating personal attacks on him and his family, has demonstrated the futility of reforming the federal government from the inside. A man of fierce intelligence and determination, he ran into a buzz saw in the Senate, and became the most hated man there in decades. He stood up for principle, but was unable to move Congress in his (and conservatives’) direction.

A strong majority of Americans across the ideological spectrum understand how broken the system is. Something like two-thirds of the electorate realize that the federal government is working to protect those who grease its wheels and feather its nest. Nobody exemplifies this corrupt system better than Hillary Clinton, now the Democrats’ presumptive nominee (again, barring black swan events).

Separate from Trump’s politics, which are an ever-evolving swirl of conservative and Progressive ideas, Trump didn’t just criticize the existing system, he alternatively savaged and exulted in it. He rode roughshod over political correctness, but he also boasted that as an active participant in America’s political corruption from the other side (the business, not the political side) he knew how to deal with it. He simultaneously represented himself as both player and destroyer.

Looking at Trump’s political views. . . . Let me begin again, given that Trump’s political views change with the polls and the interviewer’s questions. He also lies about them, as he’s done regarding illegal immigration. He railed against it, but he’s always been an amnesty kind of guy. Still, given what seem to be his sort of fixed political views for the time being, here are what I see as the most optimistic scenario of a Trump presidency:

Bush didn’t, Obama wouldn’t, but the next president should: Call into the Oval Office the leaders of Muslim communities throughout America to say, “Because of the First Amendment, the fact that you and the people in your community practice Islam is irrelevant to us in America. Your faith is your business. What is relevant to me as leader of this nation is whether you support America or not. When all of you leave this office, you need to carry a single message to your communities: ‘You are either supportive of America or working to undermine America. If you’re in the latter category, you are on notice here and now that my administration will use every constitutional means available to track you, capture you, prosecute you, and imprison or deport you.’ End of story. Thank you for coming. Goodbye.”

Having got that off my chest, I’m about to engage in a speed round-up, because I’ve got about 40 articles — really good articles — to share with you.

A Cruz convert explains why. The most interesting point is that Trump started with something no other Republican has had since Reagan — vast name recognition.

Slowly catching on to the fact that Trump is the Republican Obama. I’ve been saying from Day 1 that Trump is a white Obama. He promises hope and change by using government power to shape America to his will. And let me say, that is my sole problem with Trump: That he’s all about big government, precisely as Obama is. I find that unacceptable. Jonathan Tobin is another one who’s finally figured out the whole Obama Doppelgänger thing.

Is the media sitting on big Trump stories? Ted Cruz thinks that there are some horrible stories to be told about Trump, which wouldn’t surprise me given his sordid personal life and . . . ah . . . colorful business life. Once Trump is the candidate, says Cruz, the media will “suddenly” discover stories that make Trump unelectable. I think Cruz is right because we all know the media, don’t we?

Trump’s enemy list makes me like him. George Soros has given money to 187 different special interest groups that are attacking Trump. (To be honest, a lot of them are attacking Cruz too. Indeed, on Sunday, I heard a New Yorker news hour on NPR during which the speakers agreed that Cruz is the more dangerous of the two leading Republican candidates because he actually believes in the Constitution.) In other words, here’s a list of 187 Soros-funded organizations that try to destroy anything conservative.

Will Trump win the nomination? Scott Elliott, an extremely astute election watcher and a man with a history of accurate election predictions, is not a Trump fan. He’s therefore created the “Stop-Trump-O-Meter,” which tracks the outcomes of state primaries and projects the outcome at the convention. Even if you’re a Trump fan, you’ll like Scott’s meter, because, if you ignore the name, it tells in a clear way where the candidates stand in the Republican primary.

If you destroy the polite people, you create room for the impolite ones. Glenn Reynolds points out that the GOP, RINOS, and the Leftist media establishment did everything possible to destroy the happy, tidy, law-abiding Tea Party. Now they’re horrified that destroying the Tea Party left rage in its place.

USA Today editors question Hillary’s fitness for office.USA Today, in its quest to be “America’s newspaper,” the one read in more hotel lobbies than any other paper, is careful about taking strong partisan stands. That’s why it’s impressive that the editors see Hillary’s penchant for secrecy, and the security-evading steps she took in pursuit of her paranoia, as a serious impediment to the presidency.

[Someone commented rightly that “xenophobic” refers to unreasonable fears, and we conservatives agree that illegal immigration and unchecked Muslim immigration are a problem. I’m using the term “xenophobic” in the context of other Democrats who see the “Trump traitors” as unreasonably fearful. See, e.g., Robert Reich saying anyone who supports Trump is xenophobic.]

My core argument is that primaries are not meant to be pre-election elections, winnowing the total number of candidates from all parties down to two. They are instead meant to be the time during which people allied with a specific political ideology select the candidate they wish to have represent them before the American people in November. If that party’s candidate is shut out of the election process long before the nation starts paying serious attention to the messages, that party’s free speech is effectively stifled when it matters most. I continue to believe that I am correct.

I met one of the driving forces behind California’s open primary law, a bright, charming, fairly moderate Democrat. Back then, I wrote that he and other open primary supporters claimed open primary laws would end extremist candidates and, instead, drive voters towards a moderate middle:

As he saw it, under the old system, parties would use the primaries to elect purist candidates who represented the extremes of their position. Come the election, there were no moderate candidates on the ballot. He saw this as the reason that California was such a fiscal disaster: Because Democrats are the majority, nothing tempered them. He believed that, open primaries, when financial moderates from either party were on the ballot, ordinary people would be drawn to these candidates, and would even cross party lines to vote for them. Only moderate and fiscally sound candidates who appeal to the masses in the middle would win the top two spots on the November ballot.

I was less sanguine. Writing in January about our discussion, I stated that, in addition to my core concern — which is that open primaries stifle political speech when it matters most — I worried about it giving rise, not to moderation, but to extremism. Because I have no shame when my crystal ball works accurately, I’m going to quote my prediction at length:

I’ve mentioned before my fondness for Dancing With The Stars, which I see as a weekly morality tale for conservative values. Sure, I like watching beautiful people dance beautifully, but the show’s real attraction is how gosh-darned hard the winners — and most of the losers — work.

The most recent example of the work ethic that creates winners is 17-year-old Bindi Irwin, daughter of the late Steve Irwin:

Bindi Irwin delivered another sparkling performance on Monday night’s “Dancing with the Stars” as she earned 28 out of 30 points by channeling Grace Kelly in her foxtrot with partner Derek Hough.

But rehearsal footage aired revealed something less glamorous: Bindi’s feet are a mess!

Irwin, 17, showed the cameras that her toenails are falling off and she has to use Super Glue to put them back on.

[snip]

Like she did on her show package, however, Irwin bravely downplayed the situation.

“It’s fine. You can keep going,” she declared.

When asked if it was painful, she admitted, “Yeah!” with a laugh, but quickly added, “It’s all right. Everyone gets like this. I just have to Super Glue them, and tape them up. It’s all good.”

Irwin then told FOX411 that her toenails aren’t all she has to deal with – there are also a lot of unsightly calluses: “There’s like holes—the skin rubs out so there’s actual craters in my feet. Every night I’m kind of like cutting all the skin off ’cause it catches. You know when you get a hangnail? Think about tearing a hangnail but dancing on top of it.”

That’s a pretty darn serious work ethic right there. Nor is Bindi the only star to perform despite physical injuries, illness, and exhaustion. It turns out that dancing all day is grueling work, and it takes a toll on a body unused to that exertion. In addition, many of the stars still have active performance schedules that require them to fly back and forth across the country, all the while trying to learn a brand new, challenging skill that takes the form of four or five hours of hard physical exercise a day.